The Garth, Reimagined

If you have ventured over to the parish house lately, you have seen that the courtyard, known to many as the garth, currently resembles a giant pile of rubble, complete with a sizable hole in the wall where the new accessible entrance will go. It takes real imagination right now to picture what is coming. Allow us to help.

When construction wraps, the garth will be one of the best gathering spots at St. Luke's. This is the courtyard's first true renovation in many years, and the roughly 1,600 square feet are being rethought from the ground up. The new pavers have been carefully chosen to read as historic, matching the look and feel of the church that surrounds them. That is no accident. The St. Luke’s team has worked closely with the architects and construction team to create a space that is fully of St. Luke's, new underfoot but old in spirit.

The finished garth will welcome all manner of gathering, with improved lighting for evening use and even a small performance area. New plantings, including trees, have been selected for their resilience in a changing climate. The city requires two trees to replace the honey locust that came down in August, and the plan calls for more than that.

Longtime features of the courtyard are not disappearing so much as finding new purposes. The old stone benches will be repurposed elsewhere on campus, including in the Memorial Garden. And the stone of the war memorial has been carefully cleaned, so that the names it honors can be read clearly once again.

Some of the most important work will never be seen at all. The regrading of the courtyard, along with the new drainage beneath those handsome pavers, is designed to carry water away from the building and help abate the flooding that has long plagued the campus. The prettiest part of the project, it turns out, is also one of the most practical.

So the next time you venture past the rubble, look again. That mess is a gathering place in the making.